Today’s Learning Curve with Roger & Virginia explores the many aspects of the ways in which children can be gifted and how you can benefit your child by knowing this: and what to do about it. Our expert guest and friend today is Francie Alexander, the Vice President and Chief Academic Officer for Scholastic Education (http://www.scholastic.com/home/). This is a return appearance for Francie; her last show with us addressed how to prevent your child from losing recently learned material in what is referred to as the “summer slide.” Francie reveals there are many different areas in which a child can be gifted. A parent needs to appreciate this and the various many ways in which the child can express it. Parents can too often be concerned that their child “is not academically gifted” and fail to see what particular gifts the child has and work to facilitate and strengthen those gifts. Is your child gifted academically, socially, physically, artistically? If academically, what particular part or subjects? Learn how parents should focus on their child’s strengths and enhance them; not overly fret over apparent “below expectation” levels of skill or ability. Validating what the child does well actually lifts all other aspects of the child’s endeavors. But stressing and fretting over the child’s apparent lesser abilities only drags down the child’s confidence and self esteem and damages their overall achievement. Learn why and how parents should keep their gifted children engaged and moving forward. Learn about the extensive resources available at Scholastic, Inc (http://www.scholastic.com/home/)., for parents to use with their variously gifted children. Be alert to the possibility that your gifted child may have difficulty collaborating with other children; and that fact that gifted children need to be taught just as much as “regular” children. But most important: let your gifted child follow the line of interest it has its attention on. Learn the traits of gifted children: Language development Questioning and probing Integrating advance words into their conversation Focus on the pursuit of a purpose They love to learn Physically, they have good eye-hand coordination Love to play and excel at a sport Able to take any object (crayon, pencil, clay, cloth, etc.,) and create something from it Roger and Virginia at The Learning Curve (http://www.howtolearneasily.com)